Faith is NOT a Leap

It greatly disturbs my heart when someone uses irrational, confusing and contradictory statements that are borrowed from existentialism or eastern philosophies and applies them to the Christian faith. Most on Facebook and twitter who share or post these sayings are usually assuming they are promoting ‘deep’ or ‘spiritual’ affirmations of faith. However, they reveal a lack of biblical pursuit to worship the Lord with all of our “heart, soul, and MIND.” (Matt. 22:37) The gospel of Jesus Christ engages the totality of man’s being, including his faculties of reason, emotion, will and intellect.

The Christian faith does not hang with its feet planted firmly in mid-air like relativism.¹ Instead, it is grounded in the propositional truth of Scriptures and in the revelation of Jesus Christ through God’s grace. We must never adopt the ebb and flow of philosophical synthesis in our pursuit of reasonable truth and rational faith. God has spoken. He has spoken clearly. He has spoken in the Bible. And nothing makes more sense than to place our trust in the God who created us and sent His Son to redeem us from our sin.

One such statement is that saving faith or the embracing of biblical truth is a “leap of faith.” Most who would use this term fail to realize that it has its roots in the teachings of Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierrkegard. These two men were responsible for dividing knowledge between reason and non-reason, applying the later to religious conviction and faith, and stating that faith is outside of rational verification and pursuit, and thereby giving rise to what became known as existentialism in the philosophical world, and Barthianism or Neo-Orthodoxy in the theological world. Of course, those who promote these epistemological dangers fail to see that they have committed the error of using reason to discount and reject reason. (Self-defeating)

The Christian faith fills the three great requirements for religious truth:

It is rationally valid – It does not contain irrational or non-reasonable assumptions or contradictions.

It offers a coherent worldview – It provides a worldview offering coherent explanatory power for the questions of origin, meaning, value, morality, and destiny.

It corresponds to reality – It confirms what we observe about the world around us and corresponds to history and archeological evidence.

Therefore, next time you hear statements such as “take a leap of faith,” or “don’t ask questions, just believe,” you will know it is not properly representing the Christian faith. Jesus does not ask or direct us into mindless and irrational acceptance of His teaching. Instead, as the Apostle Peter said, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2Pet. 1:16)

God calls us to be able to present the reasonableness of our faith, the coherent worldview of it, and demonstrate how it corresponds to the world around us.

Faith is not a leap…it is a step of certainty into the beauty of God’s undeniable truth! In fact, biblical faith is the surest of all foundations.
_____¹Quote attributed to Francis Scheaffer